July 9, 2005
The Los Angeles Times

Sudan Rebel Leader Turns From War to Government

by Edmund Sanders

RUMBEK, Sudan -- When John Garang left Khartoum 22 years ago, he was a fast-rising military officer in the Arab-led Sudanese Army sent to quell a budding insurgency in his southern homeland.

Instead, Garang joined south Sudanese rebels and led them into Africa's longest civil war, a struggle that has claimed the lives of at least 2 million people and displaced 4 million.

At 60, the former Marxist has outlasted three Arab governments in Khartoum, crushed internal mutinies that threatened his leadership and formed an alliance with the Christian right in the U.S. to pressure Sudan's Islamist regime to end the war.

On Friday, the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement made his first visit to Khartoum since 1983 to attend today's scheduled inauguration of a joint government that will make him president of a semiautonomous southern region and vice president of Africa's largest country. More than a million people lined the streets of the capital to greet him. . . .

FULL TEXT

Tweet
Follow @wisdomfund

"Bush's Sudan Policy Encourages War, Hinders Peace ," The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, June 14, 2001

"Sudan Slavery Propaganda Exposed," The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, May 15, 2003

Enver Masud, "Sudan, Oil, and the Darfur Crisis," The Wisdom Fund, August 7, 2004

"Riots after Sudan VP Garang dies," BBC News, August 1, 2005